SSD upgrade suggestions

[hughwallace01]

hey all I've got an Acer Aspire v3 772G laptop,
It's about 3 years old and I noticed when cleaning the dust out that it's got a second hard drive bay. My first thought was to install an SSD and my price limit means i can afford up to 250gb.

I've got a few questions though,
1) what pitfalls to look out for when buying an ssd - kingston/sandisk etc and if I should be looking for certain connection types

2) Should I prepare any other area of my laptop to cope with the extra drive?

3) oddly I haven't found a definitive answer to this - should i install windows on the SSD and keep my files on the HDD or vice versa?

4) do i need any software to integrate the SSD or should it be automatically detected? (not including if I put windows onto the SSD)

thanks in advance!

 

[zoltan.boese]

1) Sata III connection and Laptop Install Kit for 2.5-inch SSD (I´d go with Samsung Evo or a Crucial MX500)

2) No.

3) Yes put the operating system and frequently used programs on the ssd - you can clone your present drive - and keep your data on the HDD

4) You might have to go into your Bios settings when booting. No additional software is needed to do that. You might need a cloning software however unless you make a new install on the SSD.

 

[hughwallace01]

Thanks for the response Zoltan, really useful info.

 

[robert600]

Nice that it has a 2nd hard drive bay. Here's something interesting though - only 1 of those bays is Sata III, the other apparently is Sata II.

I would strongly recommend you put the SSD in the Sata III bay and the HDD in the Sata II. The hard drive bay that is on the same side as the ethernet port is Sata II.

 

[jtimm00]

Do you have a open m.2 slot in there as well? It would look exactly like what your wifi card is connected to in the laptop. Newer laptops (not all but some 2-3 years old) have a open m.2 slot. If so and if within your budget, maybe you can look at putting an m.2 SSD in there unless you are set on just putting in a standard 2.5 inch SATA SSD, which isnt a bad choice at all if upgrading from just a standard HDD. I am unsure if you are familiar with them or how the technology has evolved? The most current, NVME m.2 SSDs basically have 2k Mb/sec read & around 900 Mb/sec write speeds and are about the size of a stick of gum. The only downfall is they are a tad more pricey then more common 2.5" SATA SSDs; a.256GB WD Black NVME SSD will run anywhere between $100-$120 and an even faster Samsung 950 EVO 256GB NVME SSD will be about $120-140 depending on the retailer. So that can kinda give you a price idea.

Anyways just throwing it out there as another possibility if you have the open m.2 connection. Some folks are unaware what it is or even if they have an extra m.2 connection in their laptop. I was recently shopping for an NVME drive for my desktop to serve as a new boot drive and thought let me just check my laptop and my old Dell XPS had one too (by old I mean 2015 model). After some reading found out that while not every laptop has an extra connection, its becoming more common for manufactures to put them in, so that they can serve as an upgrade to a m.2 SSD in different model configurations and as 2.5" SATA SSDs become more like current mechanical HDD in terms of technology advancement.

 

[robert600]

Thinking of SSDs ... I got an email from newegg this morning with a promo code for this:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820215163&cm_re=ssd_adata-_-20-215-163-_-Product

If you apply the Promo code at checkout it will be $67.99 - that seems to me a very good price for a 240 GB and I think I will order one - I've had an "adata" SSD before and have no problems at all with it - It must be at least ... 3 years old now.

The promo code (good only till 11:59 PT on 2/6/18) is:

EMCPRPU33